Time Flies

Especially when days are full from pre-dawn to the midnight hour. Can't believe it's Monday already. The pots & pans and food pack give away at Camp Hope seemed like it was a month ago. It's been tough posting at the FTH Travel Blog, but updates via twitter & facebook (along with photo & video uploads) have been easier to do on the fly.

http://twitter.com/FeedTheHungry

http://www.facebook.com/pages/LeSEA-Global-Feed-The-Hungry/109934439031299?ref=ts

Get over to facebook & become a fan when you can.

Rain just started again tonight... been raining every night since last Tuesday. Looks like the wet season is right around the corner.

Lots of tents have been put up around the greater Port au Prince area over the last couple of weeks... thousands & thousands... but there are still many pockets where folks are under leaky tarps, plastic, and bedsheets. In a camp we visited late today, one of the camp leaders told us that the people with leaky tarps just stand up at night in a dry spot & spend the whole night that way. Such a shame.

It's the simple things...

What a great day! Things started off a bit slow-- three ocean going containers are still in customs at Port au Prince. Building materials for the temporary storage canopy we're building at the Love A Child base aren't on site. BUT...

the legendary Dominican team from Resurrection Life Church put 500 family packs of food together, so we headed out to Carrefour to get bags of rice, beans, whole corn, canned veggies, and UHT milk into the hands of 2500 displaced people on Pastor Eddy Francois' lot. It was so good to see the folks again after being away for a few weeks.

So good to hug the kids & let em pluck the hair off my hairy blanc arms :-) so good to make small talk in broken KreySpAnglish with the mommas & poppas, so good to see Pastor Eddy again.

Then off to the Hope Camp at Love A Child, where 200 families are on the mend as loved ones are discharged from the HHI med camp next door. The big surprise for the day was not only bags of food for each family, but... wait for it... !! BAM !!

Each family getting a set of brand new T-fal and Emeril cookware. I mean brand spankin, in the box, stuffed with plastic and styrofoam kind of new. NEW NEW!

Talk about the look of joy, disbelief, shock AND awe! Displaced Haitian families-- who have lost everything from home and possessions to literally life and limb-- getting brand new cookware. I don't think I've been vicariously happier to the point of out & out laughter with a perma-grin in a long while than seeing the mommas, dads, and kids faces when boxes of pots & pans were put into their hands.

Going deep into the camp and into thier tents it was like Christmas in April, mom & kids sitting in the middle of the plastic lined dirt floor, with not a thing to their name, tearing through the boxes & pulling out piece after piece of shiny stainless steel. Kids playing with empty boxes... naughty ones rubbing two pieces of styrofoam together. Yeah, I hate that sound too.

Then the multiple "Messi, messi, messi" thank-you's with tearful hugs from mom and dad. I couldn't take it & had to cry with joy with them.

Listen... no good thing you do, no matter how seemingly little or small, when done with God's love and in Jesus name... goes unnoticed. It means ALL. For those of you reading this that have prayed for Haiti, that have given with compassion, that have gone... you are making all the difference in the world for these precious souls.

Posted some photos from the day & a little flash video at Feed The Hungry's new facebook page, take a second (ok maybe three) and become a fan right now:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/LeSEA-Global-Feed-The-Hungry/109934439031299?ref=ts

Thanks!

BAM! Pots & pans are here in Haiti.

Truckloads of brand new Emeril pots & pans have arrived in Port au Prince, courtesy of Feed The Hungry. Tomorow we start handing em out w/food packs in refugee/displacement camps.

Madame Sherry at Love A Child knows that they'll be a big hit and the mommas will just love them! Honestly, this cookware is top notch, way better that what we have in our home... isn't God good :-)

Will post some photos & try to upload some flash vids Thursday night after our day's work is done.

Feels so right to be back in Haiti, living, loving, and laughing with these wonderful people again.